Tracking the Intangible: Quantifying Effort in NFL Running Backs

Emily Shteynberg, Luke Snavely, Sheryl Solorzano

July 25, 2025

What Does It Mean To Give 100%?

  • put the Saquon plot

Background

  • Effort is intangible and subjective

  • Currently no objective measure of effort exists in the NFL

  • Idea: previous research has explored pro soccer players reaching theoretical max acceleration capacity 1

  • Goals:

    • Improve estimation of individual acceleration-speed (A-S) profiles using statistical models

    • Assess how frequently players operate near or exceed their limits as a proxy for effort

Data: 2022 NFL Season 1

  • Game, play, player data from Weeks 1-9: 136 games

  • Player tracking data: each observation is a frame in 10 fps

  • Pre-processing:

    • Filtered to running plays where a running back (RB) is the ball carrier

    • Trimmed each play to frames between handoff and end of play

    • Derived directional acceleration

Motivation: Estimate each RB’s theoretical maximum acceleration frontier (Morin et al., 2021)

Effort Metric #1

Effort Metric #2

Back-up RBs consistently lead in both effort metrics

Effort metrics do not show a strong correlation with play outcomes

Discussion

  • A-S-based effort alone does not explain performance

  • Another way to validate effort metrics?

  • Change the definition of effort? Incorporate game context?

Appendix